Henry IV, Part 1 is the best of the Shakespearean histories, because it is a redemption story — not of Prince Hal (Avery Whitted), who rose from his Eastcheap debauchery to become England’s greatest king, but of his father, the feral Henry IV (Peter Crook), who, in learning to forgive his son, saved his own life, and his kingdom.
It is also a raucous comedy, in which the Rabelaisian Sir John Falstaff (Edward Gero) and his merry minions drink, thieve and swive their way to glory, with Prince Hal at their side, in a mockery of all the things that the Royal Court, and England, hold dear.
And it is also a cautionary tale, in which the mercurial Harry Percy (Tyler Fauntleroy), an Icarus who carries his own sun with him, squanders a chance to topple the crown because of his own impatience. Percy, also known as Hotspur, is “a machine on top of an animal”, as Anthony Burgess once said of Napoleon: so possessed by his warlike instincts that he tells his lissome wife (Maribel Martinez) that he does not love her in order to stop her inquiries into his battle preparations.
Folger Theatre’s competent production gets some, but not all, of this. Fauntleroy’s twitchy Hotspur is entirely plausible, and also fun to watch. He is manic and compulsive; as with all such people, when he is successful (as he is in defeating the Scots early in the play, prompting Henry to wish that he was his son, rather than Hal) he is wonderfully so, and when he is not, it is catastrophic. You can see it early on, when he recites his grievances so forcefully that his Aunt Worcester (the great Naomi Jacobson) is unable to tell him how to surmount them, and later when he persistently deflates the pompous Glendower (U. Jonathan Toppo), who he must make his ally, and still later fatally, when he insists on going to battle with an incomplete army.
Hotspur is, perversely, a likeable villain, and Fauntleroy makes him so, thus honoring the text. Notwithstanding that we know the results (“Hotspur I” is not on the list of English kings) we have a rooting interest in him anyway, and it is heartbreaking to see him destroy himself.
The Eastcheap scenes, led by the fabulous Gero, are marvelous — rich, dramatic, knee-slappingly funny, and as complex as Hieronymus Bosch paintings. Director Rosa Joshi has made the excellent choice of leavening the Eastcheap crowd with several characters not in the text, many of them women (and most of them drawn from the existing cast, playing additional roles). Falstaff is many things besides a buffoon — a liar, a braggart, a coward, a drunk, a thief, arguably a depressive, possibly with narcissistic personality disorder — and somehow Gero gets all of it. Gero is known for bringing gravitas to the roles he inhabits, but his Falstaff is utterly without it; in Gero’s hands, Falstaff is like a pig with wings, if you can imagine it. Falstaff’s Eastcheap headquarters are in a state of riot 24/7, and each minion carries within the seeds for more shenanigans.
Some scholars believe that Hal and Falstaff have a deep affection, and that Hal views Falstaff as a substitute father. I did not see that in this production nor, frankly, in any other production I have seen. Hal knows Falstaff for who he is, and torments him mercilessly for it. Early in the play Hal conspires with Poins (Jazmine Stewart, doing good work in this) to take advantage of Falstaff’s cowardice by robbing him, and thereafter by hearing Falstaff’s bluster and lies about the incident before revealing the truth. Sons don’t do that to their fathers.
Falstaff, on the other hand, is less father or friend than sycophant; he is aware that Hal will someday become king, and he means to have favor from it. When he rages at Hal, which he sometimes does, it is in self-defense; he means to be in good odor with the future king. Gero gets this and shows it, as he gets and shows all of Falstaff.
1 Henry IV closes October 13, 2019. Details and tickets
Finally, Hal is at Eastcheap on false pretenses. Shakespeare makes it plain: he is sullying his reputation now to lower the bar; when he becomes king, he wants everyone to marvel at what a rascal he used to be, and what a great man he is now. “Yet herein will I imitate the sun/Who doth permit the base contagious clouds/To smother up his beauty from the world,/That, when he please again to be himself,/Being wanted, he may be more wonder’d at,/By breaking through the foul and ugly mists/Of vapours that did seem to strangle him,” he says in an aside to the audience, “By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes;/And like bright metal on a sullen ground,/My reformation, glittering o’er my fault,/Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes/Than that which hath no foil to set it off./I’ll so offend, to make offence a skill/Redeeming time when men think least I will.”
It is an implausible explanation (and may have been superimposed by the Bard, who needed to supply his Hal-reverencing audience with an explanation for his youthful depredations) but it is one of the play’s givens, and the production must deal with it. The most obvious implication is that Hal is taking a colossal risk; if his crimes have permanently alienated his father, he will never get a chance to be king, or anything else. In his confrontation scene with Henry, the King breaks down and takes Hal back (Crooks plays this scene very nicely) but we never see a reaction on Hal’s face. Is he profoundly relieved that his gamble paid off? Did he know all along that his dad’s soft spot would prevail? Whitted’s expression is indecipherable. He has pled his case and succeeded; now it’s time for the next thing.
Nor do we get much backstory from Crook’s portrait of the King. Henry Bolingbroke was one of England’s most interesting monarchs; agile and amoral, he was King John with more brains; or Richard III without the bluster. He overthrew his cousin and predecessor, the bumbling Richard II, and thus threw England into chaos. His reign was plagued by plots and rebellions; after all, if one minor Duke could seize the throne, why couldn’t they all?
Crook’s Henry is a serene fellow throughout, though. We get his occasional anger and sadness (over Hal, principally) but we really don’t get the sense of Henry the plotter, Henry the deceiver, or, ultimately, Henry the king. The opportunities are there; when Henry talks about his reign as an emblem of Christianity, he is echoing, in a much more clever way, Richard II’s blunt assertion that heaven is on the side of the king, but as Crooks plays him he makes this pronouncement casually, as though he were talking about economic development in York.
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There is a telling moment toward the end of the play. Henry and Hal are meeting with Worcester (Jacobson) prior to battle, and Henry offers seemingly favorable peace terms: return to the status quo ante, with Henry Percy and his family once again in the Court’s favor. (Mistrustful; she eventually spurns the offer — presciently; see what happens to a peace treaty in Henry IV, Part 2) Suddenly, Hal offers to go into single combat with Hotspur to resolve the issue. Is the Prince improvising? Or is part of a plot between Henry and his son, designed to provoke Worcester into refusing Henry’s peace? A single glance between father and son could resolve the question. So could a look passing over Henry’s face. But it never happens, and we are left with the question unanswered.
It may sound like quibbling to complain about how the actors look when they’re not saying their lines, but in this play it’s an important part of the drama. The production elements here are overwhelming; at the beginning of the play, much of the cast comes out, choreographed with military precision (Alex Gosti does the choreography; Toppo is the fight choreographer). The lights (Jesse Belsky) dazzle; the sound (Palmer Hefferan, who also did the ominous original music) blasts out bass notes so loud and low that they are felt, rather than heard. The actors dance back and forth; they punch the air, left, right, left. They are fighting, or perhaps doing calisthenics. Henry, sitting on his enormous throne (it dominates the room, and converts to a table when we are at Eastcheap. Sara Rung Clement does the scenic design), looks down on the floor, hand to chin. He is depressed, or maybe asleep. Then the play begins with Henry receiving reports on battles in Scotland and Wales. Why all the manufactured drama? Wasn’t the real drama sufficient?
This isn’t a bad 1 Henry IV. There are some wonderful performances — Gero and Fauntleroy certainly, but also Jacobson, who shows what can be added by turning Worcester into a female character, Stewart, who does the same thing to Poins, Martinez, who makes herself almost irresistible as Percy’s wife (thus showing us how damaged he really is), and the redoubtable Maboud Ebrahimzadeh, who achieves great separation in two really different roles. And the overall level of the production is never deficient.
It’s just not as good as it could have been.
1 Henry IV by William Shakespeare. Directed by Rosa Joshi, assisted by Manna-Symone Middlebrooks . Featuring Peter Crook, Maboud Ebrahimzadeh, Tyler Fauntleroy, Edward Gero, Naomi Jacobson, Jordan Lee, Maribel Martinez, Alex Michell, Sam Midwood, Kate Eastwood Norris, Todd Scofield, Jazmine Stewart, U. Jonathan Toppo (who also did the fight choreography), and Avery Whitted . Movement director and choreographer: Alice Gosti . Scenic design: Sara Ryung Clement . Costume design: Kathleen Geldard, assisted by Austin Conlee and Heather Lockard . Lighting design: Jesse Belske . Original music and sound design: Palmer Hefferan . Dramaturg: Michele Osherow . Stage manager: Kate Kilbane, assisted by Julia Jewett . Produced by Folger Theatre . Reviewed by Tim Treanor.
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